Previews

LEGO Star Wars II: The Original Trilogy

With a large battle taking place on Endor's surface, this chapter deals with a more personal battle inside the Emperor's throne room on the Death Star. In order to keep the "two players at all times" system in place, the game fudges the movie's storyline a little. Darth Vader now senses the goodness inside him a bit earlier and helps his son destroy Emperor Palpatine in the epic lightsaber battle.

As the fight progresses, the Emperor moves all around the throne room, forcing Vader and Luke to give chase. Palpatine's favorite move seems to be his powerful Force lightning, which he'll shoot at whichever character you're controlling. The Sith Lords in the original LEGO Star Wars performed similar attacks, and the lightning can be dodged as easily as those moves were. Simply let the Emperor target your character, and wait until he is about to shoot the lighting. Then at the last second, switch to the other playable character. Palpatine will harmlessly blast your partner, allowing you to hit him with a quick swing from your 'saber.

After defeating the dark lord, you'll witness the surprisingly poignant LEGOized redemption of Anakin Skywalker. Who knew that plastic bricks could emote so?

Chapter 6: Into the Death Star

Playable Characters: Millennium Falcon

The game's final level once again places you in the cockpit of the Millennium Falcon as you battle to destroy the second Death Star. Before taking on the fully armed and operational battle station, however, you must knock out a few Star Destroyers that stand in your way. To do this, you must destroy the two shield generators atop the crafts' bridges. The Falcon's standard lasers aren't up to this task, so you must swipe some proton bombs from the many TIE bombers that are flying around. Just blow up a bomber and fly over the glowing orb that it leaves behind. The stolen weapon will trail behind the Falcon, allowing you to launch it at the vulnerable generators. Destroy both of them, and the entire vessel goes down.

After wiping the Star Destroyers out -- all of them -- it's finally time to head into the Death Star. As you weave through the claustrophobic interior of the Death Star, you'll be forced to fend off attacking TIE fighters. Take note of the bomb dispensers that are conveniently stationed at a few key locations as you fly down into the station's core. You'll need the bombs provided by those machines to blow up barricades that impede your progress. The core won't be easy to destroy, however. A barrier surrounds the Death Star's vulnerable bits, and that must be taken out before the final shots are fired. Once the battle station starts to blow, it's a race against the explosion as you fly the Falcon back out into space.

We Do Need That Scum

After you've completed all three segments of the game, the fun still isn't over. LucasArts has revealed a special Bounty Hunter mode that becomes available once you unlock all of the game's bounty huntin' characters. There are ten of these levels total, and in each one, you scour a level to find a specific person. Finally, we have a video game that uses Bossk to his full potential.

From what we've played so far, LEGO Star Wars II takes all the great ideas from the original game and greatly improves on them. We'll have a full review of the game in the upcoming weeks, but for now, just dump a big pile of LEGO bricks on the floor and start building a scale model Super Star Destroyer. That should help the time fly by.